After waiting for over a yearHe finally gets his VA disability check.Packs up his old van.Fixes a bagged lunch for his two kids.Heads for Oregon instead

Where he can affordA three bedroom apartment.His ex-wife in Californialeaves him hung out to drylike the prevailing drought.

He enrollsAt Oregon State University.Sets his sights on a telecommunications degree.Wants to write his war memoir,Perhaps make a documentary film.

Discovers he’s been a fall guy, a fool, a patsyIn a colossal corporatist’s take over.Regrets he’d enlistedIn Bush’s Iraq war.Starts categorizing his notes

Into files of unspeakable truths.

Man Leaning Against the Sky

A man leaning against the skyStumbles fool heartedly forwardInto the shallow abyss of his mind.Lost in memory’s lament.

He hears the desperate cry of his heart.Fading fast from a lack of light,Becoming a muted muffleIn the cold, dark night,

His black hole, his soul lost.He has nothing left to offer the world.His hands crippled in ageHave less to hold on to now.

His love for her, in the absence of her,A still life memory.

Victor Henry's poetry and prose poems have appeared in small press magazines, anthologies, and e-zines, such as Slipstream, The Paterson Literary Review, Nobody Gets Off The Bus: The Viet Nam Generation Big Book, Vietnam War Poetry, The Homestead Review, Red River Review, Dead Snakes, Misfitmagazine, I am not a Silent Poet, Your one Phone Call, and In Between Hangovers, among others. His book What They Wanted was published by Future Cycle Press in 2015.

Comments are closed.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.